In mid December the government published plans to turn all remaining ‘two-tier’ council areas in England into Unitary Authorities over the coming years, and to install directly elected mayors across the entire country too.
These plans, if they go ahead, will completely change the landscape of local government in Kent and the other remaining areas with county councils over the next few years. And at an extraordinary KCC full council meeting on Thursday 10th January, the administration group voted to sign Kent up to this process, and also to write to government with a request to be on the ‘fast-track’, and start the process as soon as possible.
Sadly this decision appears to be primarily driven by the poor financial state of both KCC and Medway, and the fact that the government only appear to be willing to offer additional financial support to those areas buying in to their chosen policy direction.
One of the upshots of this request is that being on the fast-track could see the cancellation of this May’s KCC elections. A move which many at the meeting on 10th January strongly opposed (sadly my, and other’s, attempts to convince the council to express a preference NOT to cancel the elections were voted down).
I strongly believe that the cancellation of elections should not be allowed to happen. The primary argument for cancelling them appears to be that it would enable the mayoral elections to take place as soon as possible, and that council staff would be tied up for the eight week election period if elections were being held.
If those weeks are needed to get a mayoral election set up for May 2026, then the government should have started this process last October, rather than in mid-December. If the amount of work needed is such that the 68 week timeline between now and next May is that tight, it suggests to me that things are being rushed, and are at risk of not being done with the necessary due diligence for a project of this magnitude.
Should Kent’s fast-track application be accepted, we will almost certainly be electing the first ever mayor of Kent next year.
A number of concerns were raised at the meeting about this direction, from all sides of the chamber. The directly elected mayor model concentrates a huge amount of power into the hands of one individual, and the way they are elected often means there’s very little that can be done (barring a custodial prison sentence) to remove one once they are elected.
There is also the fact that they will be able to charge a council tax precept, so any potential reduction in council tax which might occur as a result of streamlining the county and district councils into unitary authorities may end up being wiped out by the increase.
This wouldn’t be quite so much of an issue if it wasn’t for the fact that there have been numerous cases of directly elected mayors spending tens of millions of pounds on vanity projects. Most notably Boris Johnson’s attempts to build a ‘garden bridge’ over the Thames, which saw £43m of taxpayers money spent before the project was finally abandoned. One of the key reasons costs can spiral on vanity projects is that mayors do not receive the same level of oversight and scrutiny as council administrations do.
The second part of this huge project will be Local Government Reorganisation, which will likely take place in 2027 or 2028. I will write an update on this next month.
Rich Lehmann
rich.lehmann@kent.gov.uk
